In a transmitter of all modern wireless communication links, an output sequence of bits from an error correcting code can be mapped onto a sequence of complex modulation symbols. These symbols can be then used to create a waveform suitable for transmission across a wireless channel. In general, the symbols can be mapped to various transmit locations in frequency, time, and space. One of the receiver tasks can be to make inferences about the encoder output sequence based on the received symbols, which are generally corrupted by noise and scaled by a (e.g., known) complex channel. When multiple transmit antennas are used to transmit independent spatial streams over identical time/frequency locations, for example, the transmit symbols couple in the transmission. Improved demapping operations are desired.